Students Fall Ill in New York, and Swine Flu Is Likely Cause  —  Tests show that eight students at a Queens high school are likely to have contracted the human swine flu virus that has struck Mexico and a small number of other people in the United States, health officials in New York City said yesterday.

100 DAYS, 100 MISTAKES  —  SARAH PALIN, GLENN BECK AND OTHERS ON OBAMA'S SHORT, ERROR-PRONE TIME IN OFFICE  —  1. “Obama criticized pork barrel spending in the form of ‘earmarks,’ urging changes in the way that Congress adopts the spending proposals.  Then he signed a spending bill …

Shane Murphy, Freed Pirate Hostage, Slams “Disgusting” Rush Limbaugh  —  Shane Murphy, second-in-command aboard the ship seized by Somali pirates this month, is happy to be home.  But he's not happy to be sharing turf with land-lubber Rush Limbaugh, who politicized the pirate affair by referring to the pirates as “black teenagers.”

Obama To Nelson: We're Going Around You  —  It might not be the most glamorous hill, but it's the one that Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) has vowed to die on.  President Obama, however, isn't going to give him that chance.  —  Nelson is perhaps the Senate's fiercest protector of subsidies …

My Allegedly Vengeful Heart  —  In an unprecedented, shocking development, David Broder is against any sort of accountability for what he refers to as “torture”: … I normally think that there's a presumption in favor of enforcing the law, and that people who think it should be ignored have the burden of proof.

CIA official: no proof harsh techniques stopped terror attacks  —  WASHINGTON — The CIA inspector general in 2004 found that there was no conclusive proof that waterboarding or other harsh interrogation techniques helped the Bush administration thwart any “specific imminent attacks,” …

House Heavyweight Feels Threat to Power  —  WASHINGTON — So powerful was Representative John P. Murtha at one time that he used to put up billboards in his Western Pennsylvania district declaring that “the P is for Power.”  Few in Congress dared disagree: he doled out or withheld billions …

A More Aggressive Carterism  —  It's like Carterism on steroids.  Like Carter with abs.  Cooler, too, I guess.  It wears shades sometimes.  —  I was having lunch downtown the other day with a couple of my crazed war vet pals I hadn't seen in a while, one left, one right, and the right one says, “So, what do you think about Obama?”